Launched Venture: heycar Spain
After the success of heycar in Germany and the UK, here’s how BCG Digital Ventures helped bring the automotive platform to Spain
This week, BCG Digital Ventures supported the launch of heycar Spain in partnership with heycar Group, Volkswagen Financial Services, Volkswagen AG, Daimler Mobility AG, and SEAT. The Spanish rollout of the marketplace for quality used cars follows the successful launch of heycar Germany in 2017 and heycar UK in 2019.
We caught up with heycar Spain CEO Fedor Artiles and DV Venture GM José Velasco to talk about building a company remotely during a pandemic, the potential for COVID-19 to change how we buy our cars, and the special features of the Spanish automotive market.
DV: What was the process of building heycar Spain? What was the makeup of the team?
Jose Velasco: heycar Spain started with us working to understand the potential for a heycar offering in the Spanish market, understanding how the market was structured and where the pain points were. Based on our evaluation, we agreed that there was a lot of potential for a Spanish iteration of heycar, so we started the process of building it.
That was early March, the period in which the COVID-19 numbers really started to rise in Europe. We had one in-person kickoff meeting in Barcelona with our partners from Volkswagen and SEAT, but we then had to work completely remotely because of the pandemic.
The team was spread across a few regions and teams: We had a team of DVers based in Berlin, but we definitely needed support in the market, so we collaborated closely with BCG Spain. The newly formed heycar Group also took a very active role. So it was really a wide collaboration.
Fedor Artiles: Once the product was nearing completion, the heycar Spain team started to be assembled. The Spanish team started coming on board on September 1st, and we’ve been steadily growing since. By the end of the year we will have taken over full responsibility for all the streams, which consist of product, business, and venture.
DV: As you’ve mentioned, you started building heycar Spain right at the start of the pandemic in Europe. What challenges did this present and how did you manage to successfully build a venture in these conditions?
Jose Velasco: The first thing I’ll say is that there are some team members I have never met in person, ever. Without the pandemic I would have no doubt worked closely in person with the Spanish team in Barcelona, but I haven’t even met Fedor in person!
Fedor Artiles: I have only ever seen Jose in front of his Zoom background!
Jose Velasco: It was a very unique situation. Having people in Spain was fundamental. Beyond the heycar Spain team, we also needed to talk with customers and dealers and understand the pain points of each so we could improve their experience and improve their processes. Doing that remotely is possible, and we did indeed do 95% of these interviews like that, but having a team in Spain that was able to work within the distancing guidelines and still go to physical locations and understand how customers and dealers work was so important.
So a new experience for all involved, but definitely successful.
Fedor Artiles: This is also my first experience building and managing a company remotely. Although we’re used to having phone calls and video conferences in our work lives, these have always had the foundation of personal relationships that have been built beforehand.
It was important to build on any existing relationships that our partners had with dealers so we weren’t going in cold; maybe a contact at Volkswagen, SEAT, or Daimler Mobility would do the first call and provide an intro on which we could build.
The managing and building of a company is definitely challenging when remote is the only option; we had to hire every single person through a remote interview process, for example, something we’ve been very successful in so far. I had my doubts about doing everything remotely, but they’re disappearing.
Jose Velasco: Just one last comment: When you have a full remote situation it really brings out the importance of establishing rituals and paying close attention to team building. It was very important to make sure we met every morning just to check in and catch up. We would get together virtually on Fridays to celebrate the progress we’d made during the week, bringing together everyone from marketing to sales to product to design to share their success.
Fedor Artiles: Having these rituals was so important to us. It was really the key to making it work without a shared physical space where we could have interaction.
DV: How do you anticipate the pandemic changing the behavior of those looking to buy cars?
Fedor Artiles: Well, it’s very early for us, but we’ve already had leads come in in the short time since we went live, so there’s definitely interest; it’s not like people have stopped searching for cars. We’re looking forward to seeing how customer behavior might have changed, and we believe customers are looking for the experience heycar Spain offers: A digital path that presents wider choice while bringing to life all of the services and aspects you would expect in the physical world, making it easier for you to purchase the vehicle which is, for the moment, one of the few safe ways to travel without encountering the virus.
Jose Velasco: Exactly. And I think there is a clear trend: I believe people will start increasingly buying cars online for purposes of convenience. The pandemic has definitely sped the move to online purchases up, and this has been experienced by heycar Germany and heycar UK: Overall, they have experienced a surge of interest from ‘lockdown browsers,’ with an 87% spike in site traffic since the first week of April 2020 and a 46% increase in users signalling intent to purchase via a newly introduced ‘register interest’ button.
There is of course a wider trend of people buying more significant purchases online which wouldn’t have been the case a few years ago. You might buy your kitchen online now, for example, which isn’t a small purchase and you might not have done a few years ago. You might compare this to buying a car; something that previously required a hands-on encounter is now completely possible and comfortable to buy online.
“If you understand the frictions that currently exist, you’ll find people are excited to buy products online that they might previously have only considered buying in person.”
If you provide the right level of convenience and confidence, offering cars which are certified to be of a good quality, like those on heycar Spain, you’re offering peace of mind; if I decide a car isn’t for me then I can return it in the first 15 days or 1000 kilometers. If you understand the frictions that currently exist, you’ll find people are excited to buy products online that they might previously have only considered buying in person.
DV: What features specifically make heycar Spain such a strong player?
Fedor Artiles: I think the most important thing here is to understand that the platform, the interaction, and the customer journey were designed specifically for a Spanish audience. We didn’t just take what had worked for heycar in the past in other regions. We went through a thorough process of both dealer and consumer research, interviewing them, coming up with prototypes, and working through the prototypes to understand behavior throughout the digital purchasing process. I think that’s the reason why heycar Spain is such a powerful tool: It wasn’t just developed through some abstract notion of what we thought might work, we actually cooperated with real users in the market.
“I think the most important thing here is to understand that the platform, the interaction, and the customer journey were designed specifically for a Spanish audience.”
To address some specific features that heycar Spain offers, I’d like to highlight the remote vehicle tour. Video calls to show cars is not something that was available in the market, and it’s a feature we offer. It’s important a customer can get as close as they can to an experience of the vehicle they’re considering, it’s obviously one of the frictions to be overcome with buying a car online. I think it’s a big differentiator and really improves the experience. It’s all about making the customer as comfortable as possible in their purchase.
Jose Velasco: I fully agree with Fedor. We had a user-centric process from the beginning; we wanted to know how the Spanish market operated and what customer and dealer sentiment was like, and while we brought what we’d learned from Germany and the UK, it was very important that our solution was focused on the Spanish market. We have found that Spanish dealerships love the video functionality and that customers do too — not just a conversation with the dealer but a full tour of the vehicle.
DV: What makes the Spanish market interesting? What sets it apart from the German or UK markets?
Fedor Artiles: The Spanish used car market is very different from the German and UK markets in as much as there is more of a market for newer cars, between two and four-to-five years old. There is also a market for older cars, nine and 10 years old or older. In between, few people let go of their used cars. This is a very specific feature of the Spanish market: People like to have new, high quality cars, which is where we’re focusing as it allows us to build trust with our consumers. The German market, for example, has a lot more appetite for cars around the four to five year mark. Overall, we’re very confident that our research has enabled us to build a product that will serve the Spanish market very well.
For more information on heycar Spain, go to www.heycar.com
Read our piece on the launch of heycar UK here.
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